1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to distributed systems, and more particularly to a system and method for fragment caching in distributed systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Caching is an important technique for improving the performance of distributed systems, including Web-based systems. A significant problem with caching is that not all data are cacheable. Data, which is dynamic and changes quickly, or personalized data, in which a Web page is tailored to a specific user, may not be cacheable. Such a Web page may not be usable by other clients (e.g., it may include the name of a specific user). Therefore, caching a page may be of limited utility since other clients cannot use it, and other clients would need a different version of the page.
Other concerns include widespread changes that need to be made to update Web pages. Suppose, for example, that a particular fragment is contained in 2000 popular Web pages, which should be cached. Using the conventional approach, the cache would contain a separate version of the fragment for each page, resulting in as many as 2000 copies. This becomes burdensome and expensive.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method for more efficiently updating information in distributed information systems.